This application discloses an invention which is related, generally and in various embodiments, to a system and method for securely transporting an item from a first location to a second location. The item may be transported within a variety of different environments. For purposes of simplicity, the invention will be described in the context of transporting items in a hospital facility.
Hospitals are required and or desire to track various items that are delivered internally from their internal service departments to various areas of the hospital, including but not limited to, nursing units, patients, ancillary and support areas, surgical and emergency areas, outpatient areas and clinics. Typical examples of this would be the delivery of medication to nursing units, the picking up of lab specimens from nursing areas, the delivery or pick up of blood products from the blood bank, food deliveries, supply deliveries and mail deliveries. Many of the deliveries may require tracking and security for regulatory purposes, such as the delivery and storage of controlled substances by the pharmacy or the delivery and storage of blood products from the blood bank. In other instances the tracking and security are highly desirable, such as the delivery of high cost or high alert (e.g., dangerous) medications.
Other than having a person deliver the item from a first location in the hospital to a second location in the hospital, hospitals currently do not have a reliable method for insuring a secure and traceable delivery of the item. For human delivery, a person from the delivering department must physically receive the item from a secure storage area within the department and complete the internal security compliance steps or receive the item from an outside entity, such as the US mail. The delivery person must then go to the area where the item has been requested and have the recipient acknowledge the delivery, almost always in writing.
The current human delivery or manual system is human resource intense, untimely, lacks security and where it is not required by law, is most often not employed. Instead, hospitals generally choose to use their human resources for pressing concerns.
Once an item has been delivered, it is either used or applied for patient care without delay or stored in a designated area for later use. The item may be stored in Automated Dispensing Cabinets (ADCs), refrigerators, locked or unlocked cabinets, open shelving or in designated rooms. In many instances, the current human delivery method has no system of feedback to be sure that once the item is received by an individual the item makes it to its proper destination for storage. Having the item reach the proper destination can be critical from a safety perspective as well as for product stability. For instance, an intravenous medication that has been prepared by the pharmacy may require refrigeration and is given an expiration date based on that storage condition. If the item is not stored properly the stability and potency of the medication is compromised and may render it ineffective or at least less effective than normal.
Some hospitals employ the use of pneumatic tube systems for the delivery of some items. In such instances, the item requiring delivery is placed in a plastic tube and sent through the system to the final destination. The final destination is generally known as a tube station, and the tube station typically includes an open bay to permit tubes to arrive. These open bays are unsecured and any person with access to the area may remove tubes or items without accountability. In most hospitals, pneumatic tube systems are not used for items requiring tracking and accountability, but that is not always the case.
In some hospital departments that frequently send items where security, tracking and accountability are required, there may exist an automated secure cabinet system. For example, such systems are sometimes employed by a pharmacy for the internal storage, dispensing and tracking of controlled substances. These systems may be electronically linked to ADCs located in areas external to the pharmacy area. However, these systems do not address delivery and therefore are employed in conjunction with the previous mentioned human delivery model.
For hospitals that utilize ADCs, the ADCs need to be routinely replenished. This replenishment is generally performed by human delivery, and although a centralized database may record the item's final disposition, the security, tracking and accountability of the delivery itself is not assured.
ADCs, also known as unit based cabinets, have become a standard part of the medication distribution system of many modern hospitals. The ADCs are stocked with various medications, and operate to dispense such medications to authorized personnel. In general, an individual ADC includes a computing device, an input device such as a keypad, a display device, and a plurality of normally locked drawers, where each drawer holds one or more types of medications. The computing device is in communication with the hospital network, and maintains a list of patients associated with the ADC.
In operation, the input device allows a person to enter information such as a user name and password. Once the user name and password are authenticated, a list of patients associated with the ADC may be displayed on the display device. The authorized person may then gain access to the medications needed for any of the patients on the list. For example, the authorized person may utilize the input device to select an individual patient from the displayed list of patients. Upon the selection of the individual patient, a list of medications and dosages for the selected patient may be displayed on the display device. The authorized person may then utilize the input device to select a particular medication of the selected patient. Upon the selection of the medication, the computing device may operate to initiate the unlocking and opening of the drawer which holds the selected medication. The authorized person may then remove the medication from the drawer for use with the selected patient. Upon the completion of this process, the drawer is closed and automatically locked. A similar sequence may then be utilized any number of times to gain access to additional medications for the selected patient or medications for other selected patients.
The ADCs are typically spread throughout the patient care areas in order to have the medication inventory closer to the actual point of use. Although the positioning of ADCs throughout the patient areas provides localized access to an inventory of medications, there are certain inefficiencies which result from the utilization of ADCs, particularly in the area of inventory maintenance. As various medications are dispensed from each of the ADCs, the ADCs communicate the reduction of the respective medication inventories to the hospital network so that the hospital pharmacy knows the medications and dosages which need to be replenished at each of the ADCs. On a periodic basis, the medication inventories held by the respective ADCs are replenished. The replenishment process typically involves having one or more persons manually transport medications from the hospital pharmacy to the individual ADCs. Such a process is labor intensive, prone to inaccuracies, and difficult to effectively manage.